Embodiments of the inventive subject matter generally relate to the field of identity management systems, and more particularly to management of credentials used by software applications.
Some software applications access external systems (e.g., applications, data repositories, etc.) to retrieve and store data, invoke processes, monitor transactions, etc. In many cases, the external systems authenticate the software applications through login credentials (e.g. a username and a password). The login credentials are often associated with service accounts on the external systems. In many instances, there is a many-to-many relationship between service accounts and software applications. For example, one software application may use several different service accounts to login to several external systems. As another example, one service account may be used by several software applications to log into an external system.